The invention relates to a stent.
Stents are used to provide permanent or temporary support of body vessels which are closed or narrowed due to stenosis.
The stents have a tubular support frame made of metal, with the support frame having several ring segments. The ring segments are formed of segment struts which are sequentially arranged in an endless manner and joined by transitions. Adjoining ring segments along the longitudinal axis of the stent are coupled by tie bars.
Stents are available in different constructions and designs of the support frame. WO 96/26689, U.S. Pat. No. 5,861,027 A, DE 297 02 671 U1 or DE 295 21 206 U1 are mentioned here as examples.
The stents are inserted using catheter procedures and similar insertion methods into the intravascular region near the stenosis and placed there, whereby the support frame can be widened from the initial state to a supporting state which is increased in diameter. This widening process can occur automatically with so-called self-expanding stents, but can also be initiated by using a suitable tool, for example a balloon catheter. The stents operate in the vessel as a vascular prosthesis for supporting the interior walls of the vessel.
The self-expanding stents include stents made of so-called shape-memory alloys. One exemplary shape-memory alloy is nitinol which is a nickel-titanium alloy. It has two defined phase regions which depend on the temperature. After pretreatment, nitinol is martensitic in the cold state, i.e., plastically deformable without a significant elastic restoring force. Upon heating, the material transforms into an austenitic elastic state. This shape-memory characteristic is used for self-expansion of the stent.
A conventional fabrication method for manufacturing stents includes slitting a thin walled metallic tube according to the desired contour of the support frame and subsequently spreading the tube apart. The tube is slit by laser cutting. The employed tubes typically have an initial diameter of 1.4-1.8 mm and produce stents with a diameter of 5-12 mm. With the conventional designs of the support frame, the employed cutting technique necessitates that the segment struts are cut out with a parallel cutting geometry, and no other options are available. However, this approach produces a high notch stress at the ends of the segment struts and in the region of the transitions, respectively, and thus lead to a high risk of fractures.